


i wouldn't mind the hanging

by endofadream



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Character Study, Light Angst, M/M, brief mentions of violence, the hair cutting fic no one asked for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-18
Updated: 2016-02-18
Packaged: 2018-05-21 10:37:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6048388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endofadream/pseuds/endofadream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He thinks, <i>you are not human. Not anymore.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	i wouldn't mind the hanging

**Author's Note:**

> I love all of the MCU Bucky art of him keeping the long hair post-WS (and I'm a total sucker for a good manbun), but the idea of Bucky cutting his hair as a way to free himself from his past refuses to let me go, and I see so little of it here, especially in fic, despite the rich offerings it gives us. So of course I see it as my not-so-civic duty to contribute my two cents. Enjoy!

Five AM finds him staring at the bathroom mirror.

It’s cold: the apartment is cold, he is cold. It’s like ice on his skin, and he shivers, still entombed in the chaotic ramblings of his nightmares. It feels like his mind is being pulled in a thousand different directions, each one worse than the last, an endless hallway of unlocked doors concealing unimaginable horrors. He feels as if he could shudder apart, right now: one wrong movement and he’ll crumble, scattered over the tile floor.

There’s a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead and a wild look in his eyes. It takes a few seconds for the Soldier—no, for Bucky, his name is James Buchanan Barnes, he’s from Brooklyn, his birthday is March tenth—to focus.

——

_He’s running and there is the blood of a family on his hands, his Glock still hot in its holster. Their dead eyes are seared in his, but there is no remorse there, just an odd sense of detachment that he’s become familiar with and embraces every time like a dear family member._

_The extraction point isn’t that far away—the air in his face mask is sour like fear, or is it him? Is he afraid? Can he be afraid? He does not know, only that the extraction point is there, ten meters away—_

——

The man in the mirror is a ghost. A stranger. Beneath long, filthy curtains of brown hair a pair of distant eyes stare back. They’re the eyes of a man of ninety, a hundred. The eyes of a victim, haunted and hollow. He can see the memories in those eyes, like watching a film reel, and they keep him up into the blue-gray of the dawn.

He tugs the strap of his tank top down and stares at the jagged line where flesh marries metal. The skin is raised and hard at the edges where Bucky runs his fingers over scar tissue, spiderwebbing out over his upper chest and collarbone. Detachment is a familiar feeling as he lets the pad of his thumb slide from flesh to metal, as if he’s watching someone else do it for him.

He thinks, _you are not human. Not anymore._

And: _you can say you forgot, but you know the truth._

He’s always known. In and out of cryo for decades, in and out of conditioning, he’s never been an empty weapon. They had tried, god, they had: tests that Bucky never knew mankind were capable of, machines and needles and steel bars, eyes held wide open while images flashed before them, quick, pupils helpless to do anything other than follow.

His memories and sense of self had been pushed down, but things like that are impossible to erase. Hidden, he’d say; locked away for seventy years but somehow, always somehow, still there scratching at the back of his mind, leaving deep gouges scored red with blood.

That was their worst fear, that the Soldier would cease to be theirs to project upon: with the success of Captain America they couldn’t have a failed experiment on their hands. That was why there was the chair and the sterile taste of the mouthguard. The stale smell of fear and sweat and urine.

It’s been a long time since he’s really seen himself in a mirror. Maybe that’s what’s got him so hung up right now.

(Well, that and the dream of the Potomac, of Steve’s face, bloodied and swollen and bruised because of him, the _Soldier_ , because Bucky Barnes would never do that. Bucky Barnes was clawing his way to the front, screaming at the Winter Soldier to stop, and for the first time in seventy years he finally had a foothold.)

“Buck?”

Bucky turns around and for a second he sees the small waif from over seventy years ago. The memory is so strong that he almost reels back, and when he closes his eyes he can still see a flash of that tiny version of Steve—and this is Steve, Steven Grant Rogers, Bucky Barnes’s best friend. He still sees that imprint of Steve, looking like he can barely stand up, against the black of his eyelids. But Bucky knows how strong Steve is. He’s always known. Much stronger than his pathetic ass, that’s for sure.

“Buck?” Steve’s voice presses again, calm, ever the captain, ever the man in charge. But Bucky’s known him long enough to catch the faint strain hidden in that single word. “Bucky, hey, c’mon. We don’t need the scissors.”

The scissors?

They glint, sterile silver, in the light, when Bucky looks down, and his lips part slightly in silent surprise. When did that happen? Why did he need them? They get set on the sink by the soap, and the faint clink of metal is the only sound in the room for a few moments.

“I’m not…” He coughs. When did his voice get so rough? Judging by the surprised look on the reflection behind him it’s been awhile since he’s spoken. He clears his throat and tries again, unable to meet Steve’s eyes. “I’m not going to hurt myself.”

“It’s not so much you I’m worried about.”

Right. The gun, in the warehouse where he’d been cornered. Pointed directly at Steve’s head by Bucky’s steady hand with no intention of letting go until after the stench of cordite seared its familiar place in his nostrils. Of course Steve would still be wary after that.

“Bucky,” Steve says gently when he gets nothing in response.

He keeps repeating it— _Buck, Bucky, Bucky, please_. For the first time, the name means something to him: like echoes in a cave Bucky can hear voices calling him that. Hears it on a playground warm from September sun; hears it in the street, echoing off worn brick; hears it whispered reverently in the cover of the dark.

He hears it in Steve’s voice, from a time long past and then from the time on the bridge. With it comes the icy whistling wind of the Alps, the heavy weight of the shield on his arm.

“You watched me die,” he says glibly.

Steve visibly flinches. Pain is clear in the furrow of his brow. “I looked away,” he admits, shamefully, like he should’ve watched his best friend plummet to what should have been his death. “I couldn’t…it was my fault, letting you take the shield. That’s my job, not yours.”

“I chose to take it,” Bucky says. With his metal and flesh hands he grips the countertop and screws his eyes shut. He remembers picking it up, trying to be as brave as Steve, whose outsides now matched his insides, who could be blown to hell in the trenches the very next day without warning. Steve, who didn’t need Bucky to protect him anymore…

“I remember everything, Steve,” he croaks, choosing to change the subject rather than expound on his decision. It isn’t anything new; he’s been living at Steve’s place in Avengers Tower for a few weeks now, closely monitored while, bit by bit, he’s pieced back together. But this is different; these are the dark secrets that Bucky’s kept clutched close to his chest since D.C.

“I know,” Steve, predictably, says, sounding confused.

Bucky lets out a frustrated breath, shakes his head.

“No, no. I _remember_ , okay? Brooklyn, you, the Commandos, everything. It’s always been there, but I just…I never was able to piece it all together when I was under HYDRA’s control.” The months on missions, unexplained words or triggers that only ever confused and angered him and sent him into a homicidal tailspin.

——

_He runs. He doesn’t know why he’s running, just that he needs to._

_He takes a bus. He doesn’t know where he is, or why he’s taking it. The seats are worn, comfortable compared to what he is used to. Scenery flashes by outside the window, and underneath the bus the tires rumble on the highway. Where is he going? He thought he knew…_

——

This he has never divulged.

He doesn’t turn around. He’s afraid to. Steve’s been operating under the assumption that Bucky had had no memory, and that he had been an empty weapon; he’d assumed, like everyone else, that Bucky’s memories began to return after D.C. It makes swallowing what he’s done a lot easier, that’s for sure.

Bucky’s certain that when he opens his eyes he’ll see disgust in Steve’s. He wouldn’t blame him. And Bucky’s no idiot: he’s seen how they still look at him, even now, like one wrong word or move and he’ll snap. He knows distrust far too well. So he continues on, shoulders hunched.

“When I close my eyes I’m…him. Every memory, every murder. I can feel the blood on my hands again. I can remember thinking that it was wrong, and wondering why I was doing it, but doing it anyway, because I was told to. Like when you’re a kid and you do something because some adult tells you that it’s the right thing to do? And you trust them. I remember…I remember all the girls, all the _fucking_ girls, Stevie.” He shudders, swallowing against the sudden nausea and rush of saliva flooding his mouth and willing the bile back down. “And I trained them.” The Room is a hard one to forget, though what he remembers is blurred. “I taught them slaughter. They were just kids and I taught them how to kill like a ghost.”

The silence afterwards rings, deafening, like the static after a shell blast nearby. Bucky begins to tremble, like he’s about to go under again, and he has to fight _it, he must, no I won’t go back in there, please don’t, just let me—_

_——_

_Fluorescent lights are harsh overhead. The metal is cold and unyielding on his wrists and ankles, rubbing against skin already raw and stinging. As always his mind is a muddled place; ever since he ran away (_ and why, why had he done that? Where was he trying to go? Because St— is dead, they had shown him pictures, they would not lie to him—but who had they shown him pictures of? He has no one. He is no one) _and they had started using the machine and the chamber._

_Around him they are talking, writing things on boards. The youngest is monitoring him, watching his vitals, slipping a needle into the crook of his arm. The restraints would give easily under his strength; they have before. But he does nothing about it. Why fight it when he has nothing?_

_They have not yet implemented the mouthguard, so when the machine clamps around his head like a vice his screams echo, on and on and on—_

_——_

“Bucky, hey. Hey. It’s okay. It’s me, Steve. I’m here. It’s 2016 and I’m here, HYDRA is gone, you’re safe. Can you tell me your name?”

Bucky blinks, drowsily. Steve’s arms are warm and secure around him. How did he get into Steve’s arms? And why isn’t he smaller? Steve used to be smaller…

“Bucky.” It comes again, gentle and grounding, and Bucky latches onto it like a lifeline, like it’s the only thing keeping him from unspooling into an infinite thread of nothingness, and it just might be. Bucky’s limp, rag doll body sags against Steve’s, and he wants to stay here forever. “Can you tell me your name?”

“J-James Buchanan Barnes,” he says, shaking his head. When he opens his eyes again he sees their reflection, Steve pressed tight against Bucky’s back. There is no disgust or hate in Steve’s soft blue eyes, and that alone loosens Bucky’s tongue and he swallows. “My name is James Buchanan Barnes,” he says again. The figure in the mirror moves his lips like Bucky, but it’s difficult to see anything of himself. He sees the ghost story, the bogeyman, the Asset, the Soldier. Behind him he sees the mission, he sees Steve, he sees the mission…

“Cut my hair.” The words come out on their own; even Bucky is surprised.

“Come again?” Steve says, nonplussed.

Bucky pushes Steve’s arms off of him and reaches for the scissors, holding them out and meeting Steve’s gaze. Steve takes them, albeit a little reluctantly, and looks down at them like he’s never held a pair of scissors before. “Cut my hair,” Bucky repeats.

“But why—?”

“Because I keep seeing him when I look in the mirror.” It’s foreign for Bucky to be so open after all these years. It makes him want to cover himself up, tuck away those raw insides he’s exposing to the world. But it’s a part of getting better, getting control of himself again. “I want my life back. I want to be me again, or as close to it as I can. Having it like this just reminds me of…of the long months before my first freeze. All the pain and rage and experiments. I want to have control back.”

It’s something people take for granted, autonomy. Free will. You’re born with the options and you never think twice about it until someone is rooting around in your head. Until they break you, physically and mentally, and the easiest option is to succumb.

It’s like getting rid of the last of HYDRA, killing off the final parasite until he’s clean again. Until it doesn’t exist even in his nightmares, where faceless white coats inject and electrocute and take away his voice and his name and his self, over and over.

When Bucky first got out, he asked permission for everything. _Can I go to the bathroom? Can I have a break? Can I sleep? Can I eat? Can you please…I don’t want to talk about this anymore, can I stop?_ He couldn’t grasp the idea that he no longer needed permission for anything. That, because there was no one around to control him anymore, he had _freedom_.

On some level, he’s never stopped asking. Adjusting to making his own decisions has been the hardest, especially when the world has changed so much. Taking this step, even though it feels like he has one foot off the very top ledge of the Tower, is his first real attempt.

“Bucky,” says Steve, and it’s so gentle that Bucky can feel the beginnings of the earthquake, tectonic plates trembling together as he desperately tries to hold onto the pieces. “Bucky, you gotta—I know that you’re not the same anymore.” A bitter laugh. “Neither of us are. But you gotta just…you gotta know that, no matter what, you’re still my Bucky.”

The words wrench something deep inside Bucky, like a fishing hook has just snagged his insides and jerked them sharply. For so long, he hadn’t been anything. A weapon is only good for so long, and only good for as long as it’s being used. Everything gets decommissioned eventually. Being useful is not the same as being _wanted_ , and Bucky wants so powerfully that he feels weak from the thought of it.

He _wants_ Steve.

“Please,” is what he says. “I trust you,” is what he adds.

Steve’s lips twist, and he nods. He reaches into the drawer under the sink and pulls out a fresh towel, then disappears into the kitchen to grab a chair. He proffers both with a small, half-quirked grin, and says, “Take a seat.”

——

Sometimes Bucky still wants to run away. Wants to escape the constant scrutiny, the omnipresent supervision. Maybe he can take Steve; go to a remote European village or the sandy beaches of a faraway island. Get away from life, his past, everything, as long as Steve is there with him.

Because Steve…Steve doesn’t say anything about Bucky’s constant perimeter checks every night. He never questions when Bucky wakes, gasping, with a choked-off scream from the haze of another nightmare; he just gives, whether that’s letting Bucky have his space or a shoulder to cry on, words murmured and gentle in Bucky’s ear. He’s made it his mission to give Bucky as many options and choices as possible, and like a good captain Steve always makes sure that his missions are successful.

But Steve also deserves so much more than a brainwashed former assassin.

His therapist would tell him that he’s too hard on himself, and that it wasn’t really him pulling the trigger. But Bucky isn’t sure how to explain that they kept his basic cognitive functions intact; how it wasn’t HYDRA who made him a formidable shot but the army.

_You can run from your past, but you can never really escape it_ he always says instead.

——

“Did they never…?” Steve asks, fiddling nervously with the scissors. He still does that shoulder hunch when he’s uncomfortable, and somehow on his new six-foot frame it’s even more adorable.

Bucky shrugs. “What would be the point? As long as it didn’t interfere with my mission they didn’t care. Why waste the manpower giving me a trim every few years when I was never out of cryo long enough for it to grow very much?”

Steve doesn’t say anything, but Bucky can hear the click of his jaw as he swallows hard. The unasked question lurks heavy in the air, and Bucky rubs his thumb over the hem of the towel, closes his eyes. He keeps them shut as he speaks, not able to bear talking about it otherwise. “It took…three years. For three years I traveled with HYDRA, doing their dirty work.“ His voice stops and starts like an old car and he has to take a deep, wavering breath. "Their perfect weapon. And eventually things just started…coming back to me. They were little pieces, stuff I couldn’t really put together myself because of the conditioning, but every now and then I’d be able to pluck flashes of memory out of the pile and recognize some small part of it. I started questioning things, trying to defect. That was when they began to realize that brainwashing isn’t a hundred percent effective and they decided that I should be cleaned and stored after every mission. Like a good weapon.”

Behind him, Steve inhales sharply. Bucky had been putting off telling Steve for this very reason.

“Did you know,” Steve begins slowly after a few minutes, each word hesitant like he’s carefully selecting them as he goes, “that I didn’t want to kill anyone until after you’d fallen?”

Bucky didn’t. His heart skips, breath catching in his chest. Steve continues on.

“I knew I was a little reckless after that, but losing you…I felt like I’d gone down, too. I wish I _had_. And because I hadn’t, I wanted to kill every last son of a bitch who’d taken you from me in the first place.”

“I didn’t—,” Bucky tries. But didn’t what? Didn’t know how Steve felt about him? On some level, he always had. But whether it was out of fear or stupidity he’d never done anything, and neither had Steve.

Steve has always been like that. Self-sacrificing. It’s a trait that Bucky simultaneously admires and hates, because self-sacrificing means that Steve will throw himself in front of any threat, no matter the collateral damage. Perhaps that’s why he’s Captain America, and why Bucky is some science experiment.

_I should have died_ , he wants to say. The words eat him up like a disease, corroding him, but he swallows them down. He wants to grip his hair and rip it out. He wants to tear his arm off and throw it off the Brooklyn Bridge. He wants to go to sleep and wake up where it’s 1938 in Brooklyn again, and the world hadn’t heard the name Adolf Hitler, and Steve didn’t feel the need to go to war.

Bucky wants decades back, the fifties and sixties and seventies. The other Commandos are gone, he knows; he wants to visit their graves but looking like this…he can’t. He is not the man they had fought alongside.

_I wish I had died._

——

_Why did you stop, on the helicarrier?_ Steve asked him one day, staking out the perfect shot, pool cue in hand.

Bucky hadn’t had the stomach to tell him that it was because, for a few horrible, long seconds, Bucky saw the old Steve the one before the war; and that, though the memories had long since been muddled by HYDRA’s brainwashing, Bucky somehow knew they were the same person. Like something had shifted inside him, yearning towards the man whose blood shone wetly on the chrome of his fist. And that, for the first time in his life, Bucky wasn’t the one saving Steve from a fight.

It was how it had happened, but Bucky didn’t say that. Instead, he sunk his last solid and threw Steve a challenging grin. There were some secrets that Bucky meant to keep.

——

The metallic snip of the scissors, followed by the whispery flurry of hair past his ear. Bucky holds his breath, keeps his eyes shut and grips his hands together so tight that they quickly become clammy and hot. He takes in deep breaths, reminds himself that he’s okay, he’s here, he’s going to be fine.

Steve is infinitely gentle, murmuring nonsense, or some story about him and Sam not long after they’d met, Bucky isn’t sure, but he’s lulled by the steady cadence of Steve’s voice all the same. If he keeps his eyes closed he can almost imagine that they’re back in their flop in Brooklyn, too tight on cash to afford a haircut and taking turns with the squeaky scissors that liked to stick.

“You still doing okay?” asks Steve quietly, taking another section of Bucky’s hair. A quick snip and it, too, is gone, and Bucky feels lighter, like a weight is being lifted off his shoulders. He hums his assent, even nudges into Steve’s touch a bit. It earns him a chuckle, warm like hot chocolate on a cold night. And like hot chocolate Bucky can feel his body warming to it.

Steve’s stories have stopped, leaving them in silence, but it feels comfortable, needed. All Bucky can hear besides the squeak of the scissors is their breathing.

“Okay…there,” comes Steve’s voice, and with one last snip of the scissors he steps away. “You can look now. If you want.”

The towel is lifted, taking its warmth with it, and then Bucky is opening his eyes, slowly, and peering into the mirror.

And he is—

He is—

The man staring back at him is straight out of the history books and the exhibits. The same heavy eyes, the same strong jaw. For a few seconds, Bucky can’t even connect that face to the person— _him_ —sitting in the chair. Slowly he reaches up, and the reflection mirrors it. He touches his nose, the reflection does the same. Jaw, chin, cheeks, _hair:_ all of it is mirrored.

Steve stands back, a bystander. Bucky says, “I am the Asset,” in a voice that wavers, and finds that the words that come out of the reflection’s mouth are all wrong. He says, “I am James Buchanan Barnes,” and for the first time he _means_ it.

The haircut isn’t perfect, and they’ll probably have to go somewhere to have someone who actually knows what they’re doing fix it, but to Bucky it is. If he had tried to do it himself he would have stopped midway.

“I look like…”

“You,” Steve finishes. He steps forward, letting his arms fall from where they’d been crossed over his chest. His gaze is soft and fond as he steps in front of Bucky. “You look like you.”

He offers a hand that Bucky takes and tugs him up, brushing errant strands of hair from Bucky’s shoulders. When he looks up they’re nearly eye-to-eye and Bucky smiles softly, murmurs, “’s hard to believe sometimes that you used to be just this little guy from Brooklyn.”

“Yeah?” Steve matches his smile and gently nudges Bucky’s flesh shoulder. “Who says I ever stopped? We’re both just guys from Brooklyn.”

Reality hits Bucky like a baseball bat to the ribcage, and he lowers his eyes. They both may have been those guys once upon a time, but that time has long passed, many of those people long dead. There is no solace to be found in the impersonal stonecutting on gravestones.

War changed them even before they experienced it. Steve became better became greater, a war hero and a beacon of hope.

But him…

He is a gun and a knife and a hand grenade. He is midnight stealth missions and bombing squads. He is disaster and chaos and the shadow just out of the corner of your eye. He is—

“You are human,” murmurs Steve, fingers tracing light around Bucky’s face, slipping under Bucky’s chin to tilt his head up. They card through Bucky’s newly-short hair and send a shiver racing up his spine. “Flesh and blood and free will. There isn’t a part of you that isn’t human, Buck.”

That’s the thing about being human. You feel. You feel even when you don’t want to, and there is no off switch. You feel pain, love, sorrow. Happiness, anger, jealousy, confusion—the list goes on.

You blink as you stare at a face you’ve known practically your whole life; a face that, by all means, you shouldn’t even be seeing right now. And you realize that love—actual, self-sacrificing love—feels a lot like elation and fear and the great swoop in your stomach like zip lining down onto a moving train.

And, like zip lining onto a moving train, you take the plunge quick and press your lips to his.

Steve makes a muffled noise of surprise, fingers stilling in Bucky’s hair, before his brain catches up; then, he’s kissing Bucky like his life depends on it, hand curling around Bucky’s jaw, the other sliding down to cup the nape of his neck. Bucky sucks on Steve’s upper lip and nibbles his lower, and the chest-deep groan he gets zings arousal through his body like an electric shock.

He pulls back with a gasp, a slick parting of lips, and Steve is staring at him dazedly, eyes wide and visibly darker. Says, “Well, shit,” and Steve says, “Have you—?” and Bucky says, “Since I was about sixteen goddamn years old,” and then Steve is looking at him like Bucky has told him the greatest news in the world.

“Could have been doing this _decades_ ago,” Steve murmurs, no real heat behind it, and pulls Bucky in for another kiss that swoops in his belly.

And Bucky thinks, one last glance at himself in the mirror, bright eyes with spots of shade, brown hair mussy and short, freeing, reins looped on an open fence post, _if this is falling_ , he thinks, _then let me fall forever._

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](http://endofadream.tumblr.com) is here for anyone who is interested.


End file.
